Lateran. It was the work of Fontana and was placed in this spot after
he had erected the obelisk for Sixtus V. The present fountain is quite
new and most inadequately replaces the old one which had stood there
for over three hundred years. By the close of the nineteenth century
the upper basin of Fontana’s fountain was badly broken, while the
lower one had been held together for some time by iron clamps. The
carving was so worn and defaced that the dolphins and eagle were quite
shapeless, and the figure of St. John writing in a scroll upon his
knee and looking to Heaven for inspiration had long since disappeared.
Maggi’s engraving of this fountain made in 1618 shows it to have
been one of the richest ever designed by Fontana. A curious feature
in this old fountain was the blending of the insignia of three popes.
The pears of Sixtus V were carved in heavy festoons under the huge
supporting scrolls of the mostra (which was a screen made low so as to
bring the figure of St. John in simple and high relief against one of
the square sides of the pedestal), the Borghese eagle poured the water
into the shell-shaped upper basin; and finally the Aldobrandini bar of
continuous Maltese crosses was used as frieze.
The obelisk of the Lateran was set in its present place by Fontana
only two years before the death of Sixtus V, and it is quite probable
the fountain was not erected until some years later. Sixtus V rushed
the work on the Lateran at top speed; and this obelisk was no sooner
in place than Fontana was commissioned to transport its companion
to the Piazza del Popolo. The Lateran obelisk was erected in 1588.
In August, 1590, Sixtus V died. Four popes followed him in rapid
succession--Urban VII, Gregory XIV, and Innocent IX, all dying so
soon that by January 20, 1592, Clement VIII (Aldobrandini) had become
Pope; and Fontana may have finished this fountain during the first
years of Clement’s pontificate, before he fell under that pontiff’s
displeasure. The frieze on the fountain must have been originally the
Montalto or Peretti frieze, which forms so beautiful a finish to the
Lateran Palace; but Fontana, while keeping the star of Montalto (one of
Sixtus V’s emblems) in the corners under the cornice of the screen,
changed the design of the intervening space into the Aldobrandini bar.
It was a small detail, and the change was a mere matter of custom
and policy and involved no disloyalty to the great past in Fontana’s
life. This would account for the Aldobrandini frieze. The eagle seems
at first more difficult to explain. From the accession of Paul V the
eagle denotes the Borghese family; but Paul V did not become Pope until
1605, and Fontana left Rome for Naples in 1596. Therefore, the eagle
of this fountain cannot have any connection with the Borghese family.
Why did Fontana use it instead of the lion’s head, which was another of
Sixtus V’s emblems and would have made a better architectural outlet
for the water? It must have been because the eagle is the emblem of
St. John. In Michelangelo’s fresco of the Fourth Evangelist in the
Sixtine Chapel the eagle stands with bent head and folded wings close
against the figure of the saint who, seated upon the ground, is writing
in the scroll supported by his knee. Fontana, or the sculptor who
carved for him the figure on the top of the mostra of this fountain,
was undoubtedly inspired by Michelangelo’s creation. The St. John of
the fountain was, according to the old engravings, a beautiful and
youthful figure looking to Heaven for inspiration and writing in the
scroll held upon his knee. The eagle was wanting, but Fontana placed
him just below the cornice between the curving tails of the dolphins,
and adapted him to the purposes of a fountain. The design was original
and extremely interesting, as it shows both Sixtus V and Fontana in a
new and unusual light. They were dominated by the place. The great new
Lateran Palace which they had built, the ancient obelisk which they
had set up, the fountain which supplied the invaluable Acqua Felice,
were all subservient to the venerable basilica of St. John. The piazza
and all that it contained were dedicated to St. John, and had been so
for seven hundred years. Pope and architect may have felt that in this
fountain the insignia of any pontiff were more fittingly kept in a
purely subordinate position.
The mostra of the old fountain rested, as the present one does, on the
base of the obelisk; and the fine Piranesi engraving of the Piazza of
the Lateran shows its position and proportions as well as the admirable
balance which it gives to the entire scene.
This obelisk is still the highest in the world, although the lower end
was so badly broken and damaged (by fire) that Fontana had to shorten
it by three feet. It was also broken in three pieces and Fontana’s
device for mending it, which so pleased the Pope, can be traced in
various places among the hieroglyphics. When the obelisk was at last
erected, Fontana carved his name with his title of knight in Latin on
the base, and the three mounts and the star of Sixtus V were fastened
to the apex. Above everything was placed the huge bronze cross, for
Sixtus V considered the obelisk to be the supreme symbol of divinity
in a great Pagan theology; and by placing the cross on all those which
he re-erected, the Pope felt that he was exhibiting in the most
picturesque and conspicuous manner the triumph of Christianity.
This obelisk, which is of red granite, was found by accident lying
prone and buried in the marshy ground of the Circus Maximus. Near
by was another, the one which now stands in the Piazza del Popolo.
Fontana employed five hundred men in raising and removing the obelisk
of the Lateran. Of these men, three hundred were employed day and night
keeping out the water which poured in on all sides. This stream is now
thought to have been the brook Crabra, the “goat brook” of Tusculum,
described by Frontinus, which, in the general decay of mediæval
times, had become one of the “lost waters” of Rome. The difficulties
encountered in transporting the obelisk up the rough sides and through
the old streets of the Quirinal Hill were numerous. The obelisk of the
Piazza del Popolo was removed from the same place and set up on its
present site for the sum of ten thousand three hundred and thirty-one
scudi; whereas this obelisk of the Lateran cost the papal treasury
twenty-four thousand six hundred and eleven scudi.
It was originally brought to Rome in the early days of the Christian
era. Twenty-seven years after Constantine had transferred the seat
of government to his own new capital of Byzantium, his successor,
Constantine II, visited Rome. He visited Rome like any foreign prince
and was profoundly impressed by the magnificence and majesty of his
discarded capital. A not unnatural instinct prompted him to leave some
memorial of himself among the monuments and trophies of his heroic
predecessors; and for this purpose he sent for the obelisk which
Thotmes III had originally placed before the great temple of Thebes. It
was brought to Rome and placed in the Circus Maximus. Its subsequent
history and the causes of the fall of this last of the imperial
obelisks are still lost in the mystery which hangs over so much of
mediæval Rome.[H]
The original pedestal had been too damaged by fire to admit of using
it again; so Sixtus V gave permission to Domenico Fontana to make the
new pedestal out of the materials of an old arch which Domenico was
to destroy for this purpose. The permission was given in writing,
for Domenico Fontana had found that it was necessary to be armed
with written instructions from the Pope whenever he began one of
his devastating raids upon the antiquities of the city. The city
government had endured such pillage and destruction at the hands of the
great Pope’s great architect that all the past vandalism of private
individuals seemed slight in comparison. They protested in vain against
most of the destruction upon which Sixtus V had set his heart, and
neither princes nor magistrates could save the old pontifical residence
of the Lateran which had stood since the seventh century on this very
piazza. It was a marvellous rambling pile of buildings--churches,
monasteries, shrines, loggias, colonnades, oratories, banqueting
rooms and halls filled with mosaics, pictures, and frescoes--and,
according to a great authority, the most wonderful museum of mediæval
art that ever existed. This priceless record of the past was ruthlessly
demolished and razed to the ground in a few months’ time by order of
Pope Sixtus V. It is difficult to understand his motives for this
particular action, since it was not the history of Paganism but of his
own predecessors that he was destroying. The populace never forgot,
or forgave him this destruction, involving as it did the loss of the
Oratory of the Holy Cross. An exquisite example of early Christian
architecture, built in the shape of a Greek cross, this oratory was
held in peculiar veneration by all classes; and the Roman people might
not unnaturally conclude that the wanton destruction of anything at
once so beautiful and so sacred as this oratory could only be ascribed
to the promptings of the devil himself. Posterity can hardly accept
Pope Sixtus V’s fountain, even with its obelisk, as an adequate
substitute for the three fountains of rare marble in the atrium of this
oratory which perished by order of the Pope.
The Church of St. John Lateran was under the protection of the Kings
of France, as the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore was under the
protection of the Kings of Spain, St. Peter’s under that of the Emperor
of Austria, and St. Paul’s Beyond the Walls under the protection of
the English sovereign. In the pontificate of Clement VIII, when the
papacy began to turn toward France in its foreign policy, the work
of embellishing the Lateran cost Rome--and indeed large portions of
the surrounding country--untold treasures in costly marbles and gilt
bronzes. The first were sawed into slabs for the transept of the
Church; and the Altar of the Sacrament owes its magnificence to the
many hundred bronzes which, together with portions of the bronze beams
of the Pantheon, went to the smelting furnaces. In Sixtus V’s time,
however, the old church was still comparatively simple; and it was
in this old Church of the Lateran, probably during his pontificate,
that Stradella’s prayer (“Pity, oh, Saviour!”) was sung, while hired
assassins waited in the outside darkness to take the composer’s life.
As the service was long, the bravos stepped inside the church to enjoy
the music before committing the murder. There, in the wavering light
of the altar candles and under the subtle influence of the incense,
they became so impressed by the pathetic beauty of that marvellous
_Aria di Chiesa_ that they felt it impossible to put out of existence
the man who could write such music; and in the darkness and silence
that followed the close of the divine melody they themselves warned
Stradella of the plot against his life and abetted his escape.
Of late years this legend has been discredited; but in such a case
as this it is well to remember the attitude taken by the writer of
“The Renaissance in Italy,” “I would rather accept,” says Symonds,
“sixteenth-century tradition with Vasari than reject it with German
or English speculators of to-day. I regard the present tendency to
mistrust tradition, only because it is tradition, as in the highest
sense uncritical.”
Over the door of the Vatican Library is a fresco map of Sixtine Rome.
It portrays not what Sixtus V actually left, but what he at one time
intended to leave. In this fresco a great thoroughfare runs from the
Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza Laterano, and at each end of the
magnificent vista stands an obelisk erected by the Pope. Such a street
laid out to-day would lead along the Via Babuino, the Piazza di Spagna
and the Via Due Macelli, and, passing through the tunnel, come out on
the Via Merulana, and reach the Piazza Laterano after traversing the
eastern slope of the Esquiline and the new streets between it and the
basilica. Sixtus V abandoned the idea as the great thoroughfare would
have cut its way directly through the precincts of the Quirinal, and
he had determined to make that spot his own abode, not only because
he loved it but because he recognized the sovereign quality of the
situation of Monte Cavallo in the Rome which he was reconstructing.
The Fontana fountain of the Lateran is not included by Baglioni in
his list of Fontana’s works; but that list which is embodied in his
account of Fontana’s life is manifestly incomplete. The fountain was
engraved in full detail as early as 1618 by Maggi; and later engravings
were made of it by Cruyl, Millotte, and Falda. These designs were so
comprehensive that it would have been an extremely simple matter to
entirely reconstruct the old fountain, more especially as the mostra
and old basins were still in place, and there could have been no
difficulty in ascertaining the proportions. Had this been done, the
pictorial effect and, above all, the historical interest of the Piazza
of St. John Lateran would have been greatly enhanced. The old fountain
disappeared in the general submersion of papal Rome. Its modern
substitute is a mere paraphrase, and the eagle seems intentionally to
represent the eagle of imperial Rome rather than the emblem of St.
John.
TRINITÀ DE’ MONTI
[Illustration]
TRINITÀ DE’ MONTI
The fountain on the terrace in front of the Villa Medici has been
called by a lover of Rome “The Fountain of the Brimming Bowl.” It is a
happy surname, for the marble vase beneath the formally clipped ilex
trees is nothing more or less than a huge bowl filled to overflowing
with the Acqua Felice. The stream gushes upward in a slender column
until it reaches the spreading branches overhead. There it returns upon
itself in clouds of glistening spray, filling the bowl with circles of
gleaming water, ever widening until they brim over the edge and veil
the marble in a continuous overflow. The octagonal basin which receives
this copious stream is sunk into the ground and its shadowed waters
have all the unobtrusive beauty of a quiet and sequestered pool. There
is no sculpture, no decoration. With unerring taste, the artist has
made his appeal to the eye through fundamental and universal elements
of beauty. Grace of line and of proportion, contrast of solid rock and
flowing water, the impression of abundance and perpetuity, symmetry,
contrast, suggestion--these are the simple qualities out of which he
composed his Fountain of the Brimming Bowl.
Sunlight flickering through the ilex branches overhead and the
crumbling shadows of their dense foliage add a poetic charm, while
the Italian trinity--Art, Time, and Nature--have given to this modest
fountain a background of unsurpassed interest and dignity. The view
from the terrace of the Villa Medici might be described almost exactly
by Wordsworth’s sonnet on Westminster Bridge, and truly
“Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.”
Here in Rome “... towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie,” massed
together in that famous quarter of the city known in classic times
as the Campus Martius; and through this architectural maze, spanned
by bridges old and new, the Tiber “floweth at its own sweet will.”
On its farther shore the modern Palace of Justice and a network of
thoroughfares with names relating to the Risorgimento and to Italy of
to-day crowd against the venerable Castle of St. Angelo. Beyond that
lies the densely packed Borgo or Leonine city, surrounded by walls,
while the heights of the Janiculum to the left and those of the Vatican
Hill and Monte Mario to the right give a background of green to all
this masonry. In the very centre of the distance, on the ground once
covered by the Circus of Nero, dominating everything and seeming to
float against the western sky, rises the dome of St. Peter’s.
The terrace leads on the one hand to the gardens of the Pincio and on
the other to the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti. From 1544 to 1560,
when Annibale Lippi was working on the Villa Medici, that portion of
the Pincian Hill covered to-day by the Pincian Gardens belonged to the
Augustinian monks of the Piazza del Popolo. The villa stood on the
ground between them and the gardens and convent of the Trinità de’
Monti. The terrace with the fountain was the approach to the cardinal’s
villa and to the precincts of the convent. The old engravings show
the fountain standing quite free from trees, which, however, are
growing along the edge of the hill and down its slope. The fountain
is generally ascribed to Annibale Lippi, but there seems to be no
positive proof that it is his work. It resembles in general outline the
fontanella on the balcony inside the villa, which is by Lippi; and the
fact that the basin is made of bigio marble might put its date as early
as Lippi’s time. The fountains in the first half of the Cinque Cento
were generally made of marble or granite, whereas after Fontana and in
Bernini’s period travertine was used almost exclusively.
The villa was the property of Cardinal Monte Pulciano, but it was
barely finished when Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici began negotiations
for its purchase. Medici, whose childhood had been passed in the
Boboli Gardens, which were created by his father, spent eleven years
in laying out and beautifying the gardens of this villa, where he had
a small zoological collection, and also in making the gallery of Greek
and Roman sculpture which rivalled that already belonging to his old
friend Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He returned to Florence in 1587,
and some time after the villa passed into the hands of another Medici,
Cardinal Alessandro, who became Pope Leo XI in 1605. This Cardinal
Alessandro de’ Medici also spent much time and money in the decoration
of the villa, and it seems probable that the fountain was constructed
during his tenure of the property, since the introduction of the Acqua
Felice in 1587 had at last made it possible to have fountains on this
hillside. Evelyn, describing this fountain in the last days of Pope
Urban VIII’s pontificate, speaks of the magnificent jet of water
spouting fifty feet into the air. The earliest engravings of it date
from the middle of the Sei Cento and show the water springing from a
large ball of travertine which has long since lost its size and shape
from the constant action of the water. The pedestal and base of this
fountain are also of travertine.
The present Church of the Trinità de’ Monti was erected by Louis XVIII,
of France, to replace the original building which had been destroyed
during the excesses of the French Revolutionary period. But in 1544
the old Gothic church of the Valois King stood looking westward over
the French quarter of the city. This church dated from the year 1495,
when Charles VIII, of France, on his way to reconquer his Neapolitan
territory, entered Rome and paid a visit--half threatening, half
ceremonious--to Alexander VI. He left as a memorial of his stay in Rome
this Church of the Trinità de’ Monti. The church became the nucleus of
French influence in Rome. The French convent of the Sacred Heart grew
up beside its walls, and many famous Frenchmen lived within its shadow.
Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici, who gave his family name to this villa,
as well as to the Venus which, upon its discovery in Hadrian’s Villa,
he immediately bought and placed here, was one of the commanding
figures of his time. Fourth son of Cosimo, first Grand Duke of Tuscany,
he had been made a cardinal at fourteen, in the room of his elder
brother Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who had died at nineteen. The
second Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand’s eldest brother, died in 1587,
leaving no son, and so, after twenty-four years of ecclesiastical
life, Cardinal Ferdinand, who had never taken holy orders, laid by the
red hat to become third Grand Duke of Tuscany. He married Christine
de Lorraine, a granddaughter of Catherine de’ Medici, and therefore a
distant cousin of his own, and had, like his great-grandfather Lorenzo
the Magnificent, and his own grandfather Cosimo I, eight children,
his eldest son succeeding to the grand duchy. It is difficult to
trace in the wise and beneficent grand duke the intractable young
cardinal who had been a handful for even Sixtus V. The old pontiff
had found in him an obstinacy and a craft equal to his own, and he
must have “thanked God fasting” when Medici was no longer a member of
his curia! The Pope was an old man, and the cardinal had the physical
advantage of youth; nevertheless it was a battle royal when this true
chip of the Medicean block interceded with the Peretti Pope for the
life of his old friend, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Sixtus, who was
not to be shaken in his determination, kept track of the time, and
held firmly to his resolution until he was sure that the appointed
hour for Farnese’s death had come and gone; then, knowing that it was
too late, he graciously consented to spare Farnese’s life, to please
his Cardinal de’ Medici. But the cardinal knew his Sixtus V, and had,
before his audience, taken the precaution to set every clock in the
Vatican, outside the Pope’s private apartments, back one hour![I]
The fire still lives in the ashes of this Ferdinand, for, in 1906,
a deputation from Leghorn visited his tomb in the Medici mausoleum
in Florence and laid upon it a bronze wreath as a testimony of their
undying gratitude and affection. Leghorn, a mere fishing village of the
Cinque Cento, had been raised to her position of the second seaport in
Italy by this ex-cardinal, and that chiefly through the operation of
an edict of toleration almost incredible at the period in which it was
promulgated. When the Spanish Armada, the struggle in the Netherlands,
and the religious wars in France kept all Europe in a ferment, Leghorn
rose suddenly and swiftly like an exhalation of the sea through the
peaceful labors of the French, Flemish, and Jewish refugees who, within
her walls and under the powerful protection of her Grand Duke, the
ex-cardinal, found absolute liberty of conscience and security of life
and property. It was this Ferdinand who furnished from his own rich
coffers the sinews of war to Henry of Navarre; it was he who mediated
between Henry and the Pope; and it was his niece, Maria de’ Medici, who
became Queen of France as wife of Henry IV, bringing with her, as Sully
said, such a marriage portion as had never before been brought into the
kingdom.
Five years after this event Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici became Pope;
so the Villa Medici, as well as the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti,
had, in spite of their Italian names, many affiliations with far-off
Paris; and partly on account of these associations, partly for the sake
of the marvellous view, their terraces became the favorite haunt of
those artists who, in the early days of the Sei Cento, began to find
their way to Rome.
In the continuity of the development of art there are few events more
interesting than the appearance of the French art student in Rome.
Gaul had been the first of the northern nations to assimilate Roman
culture, and France was the first to come under the influence of the
Renaissance. Just at the time when the Catholic reaction against
the license of the Cinque Cento had begun to force Italy under the
stultifying influence of Spanish domination, France awoke to the full
consciousness of her æsthetic nature and to her need of those things
which Italy alone could give. The army of Charles VIII had carried back
across the Alps imperishable memories of beauty, and soon afterward
Francis I had enticed to Paris some of the greatest Italian artists
of the time. Even the fierce religious wars of the sixteenth century
could not stamp out the seed sown by the soldiers’ stories and by the
works of art left by homesick Italian masters in Fontainebleau. One
by one the eager French artists crossed the Alps, and they came in
ever-increasing numbers when the genius of Richelieu brought order and
amenity into French life, and when Richelieu’s contemporary, Maffeo
Barberini, for many years papal legate to France, had become Pope Urban
VIII. To reach Rome all of these voyagers had to endure severe physical
hardships, and some of them never returned to France. The greatest
of them--Le Poussin and Claude--died in Rome. Painters, engravers,
sculptors, and architects came to these terraces to worship and to
work, and to this day the galleries and palaces of northern Europe
cherish the pictures planned or sketched about the Fountain of the
Brimming Bowl.